Just hours after news broke Wednesday that the United States had received troubling intelligence about Russia’s ability to attack American satellites, the Pentagon sent a missile tracking system into orbit, part of a sweeping new effort to control the military’s growing presence in the United States Strengthen space.
The timing was coincidental. But it underscored how concerns about advances in Russia and China’s capabilities in space have led the United States to adopt innovative ways to protect vital communications, surveillance and GPS systems on the battlefield of the future.
The system launched into orbit Wednesday was a prototype designed to test a new plan called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, which aims to blanket low-Earth orbit with hundreds of smaller, cheaper satellites. The approach is similar to a version of the Starlink internet communications system that Elon Musk’s SpaceX already has in orbit with more than 5,000 satellites. (The Pentagon prototype was launched on a Space X rocket on Wednesday.)
The idea is that even if enemies of the United States were able to take out some of its satellites — or even more than a dozen of them — the system could continue to operate by switching to other units in the orbiting network.
“For a long time, our space constellations could be counted in handfuls — satellites the size of school buses that took decades to purchase and build and years to launch,” Kathleen H. Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, said last month at the U.S. Space Command is responsible for coordinating the Pentagon’s military operations in space.
But now, she said, the United States is moving toward “multiplying constellations of smaller, more resilient and lower-cost satellites” that can “launch almost weekly.”
Officials in Washington have recognized in recent years that one of the first steps the United States would likely face in a major war with China or Russia would be an attempt to disable the United States’ telecommunications, geolocation and surveillance systems in space .
The new intelligence suggests Russia may be planning to use its new space-based weapon, which was the subject of a briefing by senior national security officials to congressional leaders on Thursday.
Currently, most American military satellite systems are extremely vulnerable to such an attack because their number is very small and their size is very large. When they were first built, they were considered unlikely targets for any U.S. enemy except during a nuclear war.
The constant surveillance of the world that they ensure has become one of the United States’ most important military advantages. Not only can the Pentagon track major missile threats, it can also use its system to communicate between branches of the military and send targeting information to its own weapons, while also providing instant information about enemy troop or equipment movements.
The war in Ukraine has shown how important these instruments are. Relying in part on U.S. satellite imagery provided by private companies, Ukraine was able to track Russian movements more closely than technology would have allowed in any previous war and maintain its communications systems despite Russian efforts to block them.
Commercial satellites are also an important part of the U.S. economy, providing everything from GPS to the communications systems used by thousands of businesses from banks to gas stations.
“If I were on the Russian General Staff or serving in the PLA, I would advise the leadership to focus on the space capabilities of the United States,” said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, who until recently served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the deputy commander of the U.S. Space Command at an air force conference in Colorado last year, referring to China’s People’s Liberation Army.
The United States relies on satellites “to spread its power across the planet, and they are not particularly well defended,” General Shaw said. “So we shouldn’t be surprised that they were threatened.”
The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is budgeting nearly $14 billion over the next five years to build the new system, budget documents show. However, delays by Congress in approving a 2024 budget could slow the timeline, Pentagon officials said. The agency is responsible for purchasing the new satellites and paying for launches to place them in low-Earth orbit, where they will be used for missile warning and tracking, as well as further research, prototypes and deployment of new space-based weapons.
Currently, the Pentagon, like NASA, is relying heavily on Mr. Musk and SpaceX to launch these new satellites into space. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday evening, carrying the two prototype Pentagon satellites that will be tested over the next two years.
The satellites launched Wednesday – they’re called Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors (HBTSS) – are designed to help detect missiles that could be launched by China, Russia or another country, giving the United States a better chance of detecting them sooner to intercept and destroy.
“These HBTSS satellites are a significant step forward in our efforts to stay one step ahead of our adversaries,” Lt. Gen. Heath Collins of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency said in a statement before the launch.
Contracts for other small, low-Earth orbit systems have already been awarded to major military suppliers such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. But the Pentagon is also working with startup companies focused on the space market, such as Rocket Lab and Sierra Space, which in January won a Pentagon contract worth up to $740 million for 18 warning and tracking satellites announced, the largest of its kind in history.
The Pentagon is separately looking for new launch companies that will be able to take orders from the military and quickly launch a new satellite system into space. In September, Firefly Aerospace sent a military spacecraft into orbit from California just 27 hours after receiving launch orders. The previous record was 21 days.
Such a quick turnaround could allow the United States to quickly build new satellites if existing ones are destroyed during a conflict. It also could be crucial in any major global conflict, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in an interview.
“We will not be able to operate successfully in the Western Pacific if we cannot defeat them,” he said last month, referring to new Chinese and Russian anti-satellite systems.
Todd Harrison, an aerospace engineer and space security scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Pentagon will likely have 1,000 new satellites in low-Earth orbit, less than 1,200 miles from the surface, by the end of the decade.
Older Pentagon and spy satellites were typically much further out in so-called geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth. From this vantage point, satellites can see more of Earth at once, but their signals take longer to reach the surface. That would make it more difficult to use them in advanced artificial intelligence-based weapons systems that may make their targeting decisions independently and almost instantaneously.
China has moved quickly in recent years to build its own weapons that could be launched from the ground to hit American satellites in orbit or in space. Satellites whose arms can reach out and grab or capture other satellites have already been tested. The United States also has this capacity, although so far it has only been used for peaceful purposes.
Chief Master Sergeant Ron Lerch, a US Space Force intelligence analyst, said China is on track to build its own constellation of up to 13,000 satellites for communications and military purposes. This is in addition to other advanced instruments such as synthetic aperture radar, which can use radio waves to track military movements even at night and under cloud cover.
“Where China is going now, they are completely dwarfing the Russians in terms of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from space,” he said during a Space Force conference in Florida last month.
The United States is already in the process of adding capabilities to the new satellites it is sending into space to allow them to be refueled in space and move in orbit when necessary, as part of a plan to extend their lifespan and defend themselves when necessary .
The United States has its own ground-based missiles that could attack enemy satellites in space or send radio signals that jam them. But so far it has not publicly admitted that it has offensive weapons in space, Mr. Harrison said.
“We are designing a future space architecture that will be much less vulnerable,” Mr. Harrison said. “Our economic and military security now depends heavily on space.”
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2024-02-15 18:08:39
www.nytimes.com
